David Blanchflower – Keynote Speaker

David Blanchflower is editor of the “New Statesman” and Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College in the USA. From 2006-8 he was a Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

His time at the Bank of England brought him into the public eye, coinciding with the impending banking crisis. He was the first member of the MPC to recognise the seriousness of the credit crunch and to argue for lower interest rates despite opposition and disagreement of colleagues.

He was the first person to warn that the UK faced recession and the possibility of house prices falling by a third. David Blanchflower was named ‘Business Person of the Year’ by The Daily Telegraph, in their Great Britons of 2008 Awards. His citation said “not only did David foresee the scale of the recession months before the eventual impact; he attempted to do something about it. David has the rare ability to translate findings into non-academic language, as befits someone who described his research technique as “the economics of walking about: you ask people what’s going on in their lives and you take seriously what answers they give you”. David was awarded the CBE for services to economics in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2009.

In presentations David Blanchflower makes sense of the latest economic data, providing expert analysis on the decisions facing Central Bank, political and business policy makers. He also explores a number of questions at the heart of the recovery, from how best to raise living standards and encourage investment, to the problem of how to deal with future financial shocks when cutting interest rates is not a viable option.